In a world where a select people can become animals - 'Nevgin' - and Skinwalkers, can the Nevgin Crowned Princess Athiea avoid war with her exiled sister. And will Sol ever regain her lost memories and find that part of herself that seems lost? And what do two travelers named Argentum and Adrian have to do with this? Especially Argentum, who is looking for someone special to him.

Hey, Anima here. I guess you're wondering what the mythology of Angati has to do with the main story line, and the whole 'First'/'Seventh' Born thing is confusing. The 'First Beings' existed since forever, and the 'Sun' - Phoenix - and 'Moon' - Dragon - are the First Born, Chaos and Abyssus being the Second Born, then there're birds, fish, and land animals - the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Born. There are two other gods that were born just before Humans, who are the Seventh Born. Hope that cleared up some stuff. As to what this has to do with the rest of the story, you'll figure that out. Right now, it's not that great a time in Angati's history, since there's drought in the north after a hard flood the previous year, and a group of exiles have been raiding the country, and some people are actually thinking of declaring war on the Skinwalkers.

Oh! And my best friend drew the picture I'm using, and I colored it. It's of Argentum and Sol.

She held still in the branches, reveling in the quiet of the blackness around her. On most days, she would give anything to be on her warm, straw pallet, snuggled under as many of her thin blankets as possible, and as close to the small fire as the straw would allow. But this wasn't any other day. This was the day she would steal from the palace itself, hopefully giving her enough money to buy plenty of food, fire wood, and some thicker blankets for this year's quickly approaching winter. Last year had been especially hard on her little 'house' in the northern-most village in Angati's farming district. The harvest was bountiful that fall, but this past summer had been hotter than usual, and they didn't expect much rain to follow before the first frost, so Sol had gotten herself out of there before it got worse. At the moment, she was using stolen money to stay at a cheap inn. But that wouldn't hold out for long. This was her only other option, as work had become scarce to find in this city. It was almost as bleak as the farm lands.

Watching carefully, Sol waited for the guard to pass by underneath the branch. She wouldn't be too worried about being caught if she wasn't leaning on a willow branch. Any other sort of tree would be fine, but this was an old tree and the main limbs were fragile. Nine times out of ten, the weight of any human, be it a woman of her slight build or a child, the limbs would have broken. But she seemed to have a knack for not breaking the tree, as if her bones were weightless like a bird's.

Finally, the guard walked away and allowed her to jump down from the height and to the other side of the wall. All that week before this night she had studied the layout of the palace. There was no way she could screw this up. Keeping to the walls, Sol tried her best not to make a single noise, lest she be caught and her life swiftly brought to an end. She didn't want to think about if she was brought before the High Priest and the Dragon and Phoenix's priest and priestess. That thought made her sick, as if she'd be disappointing someone close to her. But that was the problem. There wasn't anyone that she'd ever been close to, except her father.

As a child, she was quiet and shy, but could always laugh when her father was with her. He wasn't really her father, but he'd taken care of her ever since she was found in the woods at the tender age of five. He was all she had known, and Sol didn't take to playing with the other village children, since they would always make fun of her quietness and eye color. Red. Blood red. Fire red. Crimson. It didn't matter what name you called it, she was still marked by the color of her eyes. The color of the country was blue, the color of Dragon's scales. The Skinwalkers were marked by Chaos, possessing violet eyes, the most unnatural color any could have. It was said that in her Beastly Form, Phoenix had red eyes, but they were blue when she took her Human Form. The same could not be said for Dragon, whose eyes were forever blue.

It was a cool evening for even the capitol. Normally it wouldn't become cold until the late fall, just weeks before winter would set in. The Dragon Nevgin would be restless soon and need to travel south before their tempers got the best of them. The country didn't need its greatest gifts from the First Born to destroy each other and their home land just because the weather decided to change earlier this year. A breeze came by and played with the leaves of a nearby willow, and he swore there was someone around the wall. As one of his Gifts, he could sense unknown people around him, as well as many other lesser psychic abilities. If only he wasn't affected by the cold in his Human Form, Aquan thought as he walked inside the garden. Normally he would be in bed by the fire, but he'd been woken up by a Dragon roaring in his dream. Something would happen tonight, he knew it. Dragon wouldn't wake him for nothing. It wasn't long before he heard a scream from the palace that sounded like the Crowned Princess's. What had Athiea done now?

Running inside, he saw a young woman fighting off some of the guards who were in front of the princess's rooms. She kicked them all down and ran in his direction. The second he put his hand to her shoulder to stop her, he was pulled into one of her memories. All around was fire, burning high on all sides of her. She couldn't get out, but she wasn't afraid either. The memory was so intense that he felt the heat of the flames. He'd never encountered anyone with this strong of an emotion.

Releasing her, Aquan realized his hand was extremely warm. The woman just looked at him, almost dazed. Within moments, she collapsed onto the cold stone floor of the hall, her energy entirely drained from the long forgotten memory. The uninjured guards quickly rushed to him and picked up the intruder just as a squirrel ran out of the window. Athiea. Of course she'd been startled by everything.

"Go and tell your master, Aquan. We need to keep this one locked up tight," the largest of the men told him. Even at this age he was dwarfed by full grown men.

"Of course." He was still dazed and could barely comprehend that he'd been spoken to for a moment. All he remembered was being surrounded by fire. Hopefully he would get the chance to talk to that thief and get some answers from her. This was the weirdest thing next to when he was a kid and that Dragon Nevgin had touched him on the shoulder. He'd seen a similar memory, only from the angle of someone watching a fire. There had been a certain uneasiness from that one. Like the man had been worried for someone that may have been in the fire. But who had that man been?

While he could see others' memories, it was a bit harder for him to recall several of his own, such as what his own twin looked like and what had happened the day he'd been identified as a Dragon Nevgin, or even where he used to live before he moved to the Angati capitol and became the High Priest's apprentice. It was like his memory had been altered by someone. Maybe it was the man who had visited his family that day. That day . . . . It was like a passing dream now that he wasn't even sure it had happened, like he'd always lived in the capitol.

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